The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume I Part 23

She was a good horsewoman, and as a girl had been fond of riding. She was now mounted "upon a very pretty mare, which, by its gambols and caracoling, seemed proud to carry its n.o.ble charge, and our cavalcade produced an extraordinary effect upon the motley crowd of all nations a.s.sembled at Balaclava, who were astonished at seeing a lady so well escorted." Was not the great Soyer himself among the escort? The Commander of the Forces was away, but Miss Nightingale was taken to the Three Mortar Battery, and the soldiers, as she pa.s.sed, gave her three times three. This visit to the front made a profound and indelible impression upon her.[172] It is first recorded in a letter of May 10, which was forwarded to Windsor Castle.[173] "Fancy," she wrote, "working five nights out of seven in the trenches! Fancy being 36 hours in them at a stretch, as they were all December, lying down, or half lying down, often 48 hours with no food but _raw_ salt pork, sprinkled with sugar, rum, and biscuit; nothing hot, because the exhausted soldier could not collect his own fuel, as he was expected to do, to cook his own ration; and fancy through all this the army preserving their courage and patience as they have done, and being now eager (the old ones more than the young ones) to be led even into the trenches. There was something sublime in the spectacle." "When I see the camp," she wrote to Lady Canning (May 10), "I wonder not that the army suffered so much, but that there is any army left at all; but now all is looking up. Sir John M'Neill has done wonders." With Sir John M'Neill, a doctor who afterwards entered the Political Service in the East, Miss Nightingale formed a great friends.h.i.+p. He, with Colonel Tulloch, had been sent out to the Crimea by Lord Palmerston's Government to report upon the Commissariat system.

[172] See, _e.g._, below, pp. 317, 488, and Vol. II. p. 411.

[173] Found among the Prince Consort's papers, and printed in Sir Theodore Martin's _Life_ of him, vol. iii. p. 214.

Miss Nightingale, on this and her later visits to the Crimea, saw and heard of many deeds of heroism which she loved to tell. "I remember,"

she wrote, "a sergeant, who was on picket, the rest of the picket killed, and himself battered about the head, stumbled back to camp, and on his way picked up a wounded man, and brought him in on his shoulders to the lines, where he fell down insensible. When, after many hours, he recovered his senses, I believe after trepanning, his first words were to ask after his comrade, 'Is he alive?' 'Comrade, indeed! yes, he's alive, it is the General.' At that moment the General, though badly wounded, appeared at the bedside. 'Oh, General, it's you, is it, I brought in, I'm so glad. I didn't know your honour, but if I'd known it was you, I'd have saved you all the same.' This is the true soldier's spirit."[174]

[174] Letter on the Volunteers, 1861. See Bibliography A, No. 25.

III

During the few days immediately after her arrival at Balaclava, Miss Nightingale carried on an active investigation of the hospitals, regimental and general; arranged various affairs in connection with the sisters and nurses; discussed the building of new huts; and, in conjunction with M. Soyer, planned the erection of several kitchens for extra diet. Here, as at Scutari, she was fearless of contagion, and tended patients stricken with fever. On return to her s.h.i.+p one evening she complained of great fatigue; and on the following morning, feeling no better, she sent for Dr. Anderson, Chief Medical Officer at the General Hospital. He called others of the medical staff into consultation, and a joint bulletin was issued to the effect that Miss Nightingale was suffering from Crimean fever. They advised that she should be removed from the s.h.i.+p, and she was carried on a stretcher by relays of soldiers to the Castle Hospital on the Genoese Heights. The hut in which she lay was immediately behind those of the wounded soldiers. The attack of fever was sharp, and she was, as she afterwards admitted to her friends, "very near to death." There are sc.r.a.ps of ma.n.u.script among her papers (for even in illness she could not be kept from the use of her pen) which show a wandering mind.

The news of Miss Nightingale's illness was received with consternation in England, and the anxiety of her friends was intense, though Lord Raglan had thoughtfully arranged that a telegraphic dispatch from him should not reach them till, after two or three days of the fever, the doctors were able to hold out hopes of recovery. "Sitting to-day," wrote her sister to a friend, from Embley (May 27), "in the little Vicarage woodhouse, waiting for the people to come out from church (for we were not up to the whole service), in order to go in to the Communion which she loves so well, and which we always take with her and G.o.d, and which she is taking in spirit or reality to-day if she is alive, and if not is taking in a higher and happier sense--Mama said, 'I thank G.o.d she is ready for life or for death'; and in that, dear, we truly strive to rest, though the spirit would quail, I am afraid, if there were not hope at the bottom." The anxiety in the War Hospitals was scarcely less. "The soldiers turned their faces to the wall," said one, "and cried." The crisis pa.s.sed, and on May 24 Lord Raglan was able to telegraph home that the patient was out of danger, and three days later that she was going on favourably. The bulletins were forwarded to the Queen, and on May 28 Her Majesty, in writing to Lord Panmure, was "truly thankful to learn that excellent and valuable person, Miss Nightingale, is safe."[175] At this time a horseman rode up to her hut, and the nurse, Mrs. Roberts, who had been enjoined to keep the patient quiet, refused to let him in.

He said that he most particularly desired to see Miss Nightingale. "And pray," said Mrs. Roberts, "who are you?" "Ah, only a soldier," replied the visitor, "but I have ridden a long way, and your patient knows me very well." He was admitted, and a month later was himself laid low and died. It was Lord Raglan.

[175] _Panmure Papers_, vol. i. p. 215.

IV

Miss Nightingale, on becoming convalescent, was strongly advised by the doctors to take a voyage to England. She would not listen to such advice. Her work at the front had but just begun, and she was resolved to return to it after the shortest possible delay. The voyage to the Bosphorus was the longest that she could be induced to take. Her good Mrs. Bracebridge had arrived from Scutari just in time to accompany her friend on the return voyage. Lord Ward, whose steam-yacht was in harbour at the time, pressed the use of it upon her, and in it she was taken to Scutari. When the yacht reached Scutari, all the high officials were present to meet it. One of the large barges, used to remove the sick and wounded, was brought alongside, and Miss Nightingale, in a state of extreme weakness and exhaustion, was lowered into it. At the pier soldiers were in readiness, who carried her on a stretcher to the chaplain's house, followed by a large and sympathetic crowd. "I do not remember anything during the campaign," wrote the good-hearted Soyer, "so gratifying to the feelings as that simple though grand procession."

"Ah," said a soldier, "there was no sadder sight than to see that dear lady carried up from the pier on a stretcher just like we men, and perhaps by some of the fellows she nursed herself."[176] It was the same when she was presently moved from Scutari to the sh.o.r.e in order to go to Therapia, where the Amba.s.sador had placed his summer residence at her disposal. She was carried in a litter by four guardsmen, but, though it was only five minutes' walk to the sh.o.r.e, there were two relays, and her baggage was divided among twelve soldiers, though two could easily have carried the whole,[177] so great was the desire of the men to share in the honour of helping the Lady-in-Chief.

[176] _Blackwood_, p. 115.

[177] _Memoirs of Lady Eastlake_, vol. ii. p. 44.

Her recovery was gradual, and her weakness great. Mrs. Bracebridge described her as unable to feed herself or speak above a whisper. The extreme exhaustion was more from the previous overstrain on mind and body than from the fever, the doctors said, and they recommended complete change and rest. Mr. Sidney Herbert wrote, imploring her to come home for two months: "We are delighted," wrote her mother (July 9), "to think of you at Therapia. Oh, my love, how I trust that you will, among the numerous lessons which your life has been spent in learning, be able to perfect that most difficult one of standing and waiting." She was to be lessoned in that form of service, but not till after many more years of arduous labour, and for the present she would not hear of any return to England. The feeling of the soldiers for her touched her so deeply that she could not bear, she said, to leave them. Gradually she recovered strength. "We have a charming account," wrote her sister (Aug. 21), "from Lothian Nicholson just ordered out to Crimea, who is quite enthusiastic, dear old boy, about her good looks, which, as all her hair has been cut off, is good testimony--'her own smile,' he talks of, and says he can hardly believe she has gone through such a winter.

The dear Bracebridges say that her improvement in the last week was delightful and wonderful." Already, in July, her business letters were resumed. In August she was in the full rush of work again. The doctors and her friends still besought her to take rest. But her indomitable spirit would listen to no counsels of retreat. The end of the war was not yet in sight. Even Sebastopol had not yet fallen. So long as there remained sick and wounded in the Levant to be cared for, she was resolved to remain also. A soldier was told that the Lady-in-Chief would probably be sent home. "But how will they _pairt_ with her," he said, "what'll they do without her? they set all their hopes on she." There were nurses, too, naturally anxious to rejoin their families or friends at home, who said that, if she went, they would go. The presence of Miss Nightingale, with her lofty ideals and inspiring self-devotion, was the attraction which kept many of these women at their posts. Some had already died. Mrs. Elizabeth Drake, one of the nurses whom Miss Nightingale had taken with her to the Crimea, died on August 9 of low fever at Balaclava. "I cannot tell you," wrote Miss Nightingale to the Master of St. John's House (Aug. 16, 1855), "what I felt when I heard of her death, unexpected alike by all. Her two physicians thought her going on well, and I expected her in every convoy that came down from Balaclava, as she was coming to me to recruit. I have lost in her the best of all the women here. Once I proposed to her to go home, but she scouted the idea entirely and said her health was better here than in England. I feel like a criminal in having robbed you of one so truly to be loved and honoured. It seemed as if it pleased G.o.d to remove from the work those who have been most useful to it. His will be done!" Nurse Drake's body was brought to Scutari, and Miss Nightingale erected a small marble cross over it in the cemetery. It was no time, when members of the rank-and-file were falling at the post of duty, for the chief to listen to counsels of medical prudence. Nor, indeed, at any time did Miss Nightingale harbour even a pa.s.sing thought of what would have seemed to her an act of military desertion. She remained till the end of the war came, and till the last transport had sailed; working indefatigably as ever, and in some respects in new spheres of usefulness, both in the Crimea and at Scutari; to what good effect we shall hear in later chapters, but at great cost to her own comfort and bodily strength. She had been appointed, as she used to say, to a subsidiary post in the Queen's Army[178]; the humblest post, it might be, but still a post of duty. The men had dared and suffered; and Florence Nightingale was resolved to show that a woman too had strength to suffer and endure.

[178] She was especially pleased when in March 1856 her name appeared for the first time in General Orders; see below, p. 293.

During the weeks of convalescence at Scutari, Miss Nightingale used sometimes to walk at evening on the sh.o.r.e, in full sight of that view which, when she had first come there, they told her was the finest in the world, but which, in the crush of work, she had no time to enjoy.[179] She sent a letter to her people at home describing one such evening walk, and it was read out in the family circle. Lady Byron, who was staying with them at the time, heard it read, and said that it was "like a hymn--simple and deep-toned." She described how, on the opposite side, the city of Constantinople was defined against the burning sky of the setting sun, but the outline was changed by the fall of some mounds in an earthquake. Near her were the graves of the heroic dead, the thousands with whom, she said, she felt identified. "It went into my heart," wrote Lady Byron, "as the poetry of fact--for she has made poetry fact." The letter went on to speak of the British burying-ground at Scutari, and Miss Nightingale added these lines:--

"They are not here!" No, not beneath that sod, And yet not far away, For they can mingle their new life from G.o.d With living souls, not clay.

And they, "the heroic dead," will softly pour Into thy spirit's ear A music human still, but sad no more, To tell thee they are near--

Near thee with higher ministering aid Thy heart-work to return, So that each sacrifice that love has made A victory shall earn![180]

[179] Above, p. 173.

[180] The words in inverted commas were quotations from Miss Nightingale's letters. These had been shown to a friend, who thereupon wrote the lines, above quoted, and sent them to her.

CHAPTER X

THE POPULAR HEROINE

Miss Nightingale looks to her reward from this country in having a fresh field for her labours, and means of extending the good that she has already begun. A compliment cannot be paid dearer to her heart than in giving her work to do.--SIDNEY HERBERT.

The news of Miss Nightingale's illness spread sympathetic anxiety throughout Great Britain. Even more than when her mission of mercy was first announced, she became the popular heroine; and more than ever men and women of all cla.s.ses sought means of showing their sympathy.

Lady Verney, whose depth of feeling is not concealed by the play of humour which sparkles pleasantly upon the surface, described, successively, the penalties and the pleasures of being the sister of a heroine:--

(_Miss F. P. Nightingale to Miss Ellen Tollet._) EMBLEY, _Friday_ [_Summer of 1855_]. I am quite _done_ with writing, a second blast of linen and knitted socks was nearly the death of me, and 'hints,'

my dear!--oh, my horror of being asked for hints,--such as "can newspapers be put into the post free?" and such like _niaiseries_.

How grateful I am to you for never once having inquired whether socks or m.u.f.fetees are most required, and whether you are safe in sending 6 towels and an old tablecloth to London, or whether they had better come to us. It sounds very ungrateful, I am afraid, but when one's wrist aches over the two hundredth repet.i.tion of the matter, I do wish the public would apply to the nearest post office, or read that scarce and erudite work the _Times_, and use their sense not their pens.

However, these words are only when I am cross at having been prevented from writing to the folk I love, such as thee, of the progress of Scutari. Else generally the feeling in every soul, so wide and so deep, touches us more than I can tell, and helps us over the inevitable weight of the anxiety more than I thought possible--heavy, redfaced, old fox-hunting Squires, who never had a "sentiment" in their lives, come with their eyes full of tears; narrow-minded Farmers with _both_ eyes on the main chance are melted; young ladies who never got beyond b.a.l.l.s and concerts are warmed. Dearest, I do feel of the feeling she has raised, it blesseth "him here who gives and those out there who take," and will do good wider than one hoped. I can't so much as write for a dispatch box for her (thinking an official of her scale must want one for her papers) without its coming back full of pretty little match boxes as an offering, and wrapped in a large contribution of old sheets.... I must give you the cream of this last three or four days' letters. Firstly, Mr. Hookham, the bookseller, sending down a parcel, says he "trusts to hear of the return of Miss N., as he does not think, though convalescent, she can get well on the sh.o.r.es of Bosphorus or Black Sea; that a General or Admiral can be replaced, but there can be no successor to Miss N., her skill, her fort.i.tude, her courage cannot be replaced. I speak of courage in the most exalted sense that it is possible to characterise the bravery and devotion of woman." Then comes a letter from a s.h.i.+powner in the north of Scotland going to launch a vessel, and wanting to call it after her, sends to have her name quite "correct." Next, Lady Dunsany saying that "Joan of Arc was not more a creation of the moment and _for_ the moment than F. Joan's was the same unearthly influence carrying all before its spirit might--Joan's was the same strange and s.e.xless ident.i.ty, which, belonging as it were neither to man nor woman, seemed to disembody and combine the _choicest results_ of both, and then to sweep down conventionalities, prejudices, and pruderies, with the clear, cold, crystal sceptre of its _majestic purity_. Joan's mission, too, was the condensation of her country's moral and intellectual power in the person of a young and single woman when the men of that country were so many of them imbecile and effete! I think my parallel runs pretty close." Lord Dunsany adds that he has no time to write, so he says, "ditto to Mrs. Burke," and that I know he is "fanatico for Joan of Arc rediviva, G.o.d bless her." Then a bit from Lady Byron, saying, "even her illness will advance her work as all things must for those who do all with His aid," and more that is most beautiful. Then 2 copies of the _History of Women_, with portrait of Miss N. to be sent to her "from the author," and a flaming extract from a County paper in a pamphlet, _Stroll to Lea Hurst_, 20 copies ditto, ditto, and a majestic effusion from the family grocer about "heroic conduct," "brave and n.o.ble Miss N.,"

"identified with Crimean success and sad disasters," "posterity,"

"arm of civilisation," "rampant barbarism," &c. &c., and so on.

(_To Florence Nightingale._) _Dec._ 8 [1855]. It has been curious (as your representative) how our Burlington Street room has seen Manning and Maurice, Mr. Best and the Chancellor, Lady Amelia Jebb and Mrs. Herbert, Lady Byron and Lady Canning, the extremes of all kinds crowding in to help you in every way that they could devise.

Then come in tradespeople, all so intent on you; and working folk, your stoutest supporters, and those you will care most for. And we are tenderly treated and affectionately welcomed by one and all of all cla.s.ses and opinions for your sake, my dear, and very sweet to me is kindliness for your dear sake; it seems as if it were part of you coming to meet me.

II

But Miss Nightingale's popularity was not limited to such circles as those in which her family moved. Letters from soldiers in the Crimea had made her known in thousands of humble homes, and she became the heroine of the cottage, the workshop, and the alleys. Old soldiers dropped into poetry about her, and rhymed broadsheets, with rough woodcuts of the Lady with the Lamp, issued from printers in Seven Dials and Soho. One of these songs, ent.i.tled "The Nightingale in the East," and intended to go to the tune of "The Cottage and Water Mill," was especially popular with its refrain:--

So forward, my lads, may your hearts never fail, You are cheer'd by the presence of a sweet Nightingale.[181]

[181] For the text see Bibliography B, No. 7. An article in the _Quarterly Review_ of April 1867, ent.i.tled "The Nightingale in the East," is "a study of the Poetry of Seven Dials." The popular ditty about Miss Nightingale has been sung under many skies and to many audiences; never to greater effect than on Christmas Day 1870 in St. Thomas's Hospital (then in the Surrey Gardens). The nurses had arranged a Christmas treat; the children had sung hymns, and older patients had given popular songs of the day. A patient in the Accident Ward, a coal-heaver with a broken leg, then volunteered; when the words of the refrain caught the ears of the Nightingale nurses, "we dropped all work" (says one of them), "and listened intently till the song was over, all enthusiasm for our Chief."

The singer told them that he was an old soldier, and had been nursed by Miss Nightingale in the General Hospital at Balaclava.

Then from the same cla.s.s of printing-offices there issued "Price One Penny, The Only and Unabridged Edition of the Life of Miss Nightingale, Detailing her Christian Heroic Deeds in the Land of Tumult and Death, which has made her name most deservedly Immortal, not only in England, but in all Civilized Parts of the World, winning the Prayers of the Soldier, the Widow, and the Orphan." The poets and biographers were not only in Seven Dials. The Poet's Corner of every newspaper, from _Punch_ and the _Spectator_ to the smallest country journal, was devoted to the praise of the heroine. Ingenious triflers were at work, and it was found that her anagram was indeed, as an old definition has it, poesie transferred, and Florence Nightingale became "Flit on, cheering angel."

Prize poems at the universities pictured her, in the manner of such compositions, walking fearlessly

Where strong men tremble and where brave hearts fail.

Then the musicians took up the Popular Heroine, and both now, and after her return from the Crimea, sentimental songs, set to music, were inscribed to her: "Angels with Sweet Approving Smiles," "The Shadow on the Pillow," "The Soldier's Widow," "The Woman's Smile," "The Soldier's Cheer"--this latter "played by the band of the 97th Regiment,"--"Die Soldaten Lebewohl," "The Star of the East," and so forth. The stationers followed in the wake of the printers, and brought out note-paper with a picture of Florence Nightingale as the water-mark, or with lithographed views of "Lea Hurst, her home." Portraits of her were eagerly sought; and as the family were unwilling to supply them, likenesses had to be invented to adorn sentimental prints. Life-boats and emigrant-s.h.i.+ps were christened _The Florence Nightingale_. Children, streets, valses, and race-horses were named after her. "The Forest Plate Handicap was won by Miss Nightingale, beating Barbarity and nine others." Tradesmen printed portraits and short lives of her on their paper bags. At Fairs there were "Grand Exhibitions of Miss Florence Nightingale administering to the Sick and Wounded." China figures, with no recognizable likeness to her, but inscribed "Florence Nightingale," were put on sale. The public would not be denied. "Yes, indeed," wrote Lady Verney to her sister, "the people love you with a sort of pa.s.sionate tenderness that goes to my heart."

Miss Nightingale did not relish all this. They had sent her various supplies for the sick, and also a packet of "Lives," "Portraits," and the like to Scutari. "My effigies and praises," she wrote in reply, "were less welcome. I do not affect indifference to real sympathy, but I have felt painfully, the more painfully since I have had time to hear of it, the eclat which has been given to this adventure. The small still beginning, the simple hards.h.i.+p, the silent and _gradual_ struggle upwards, these are the climate in which an enterprise really thrives and grows. Time has not altered our Saviour's lesson on that point, which has been learnt successively by all reformers from their own experience.

The vanity and frivolity which the eclat thrown upon this affair has called forth has done us unmitigated harm, and has brought mischief on (perhaps) one of the most promising enterprises that ever set sail from England. Our own old party which began its work in hards.h.i.+p, toil, struggle, and obscurity has done better than any other."

III

When it became known in England that Miss Nightingale had recovered from her illness, and had resolved to remain at her post until the end of the war, a movement at once sprang up for marking in some public manner the nation's appreciation of her services and her devotion. There was at first some idea, as Lady Verney wrote, of a personal testimonial in the "teapot and bracelet" kind. Mrs. Herbert, who was consulted in the matter, knew her friend well enough to be certain that Miss Nightingale would decline to accept any such proposal. The only form of testimonial to which she would ever listen was something to enable her the better to carry on her work for others. Miss Nightingale was written to, and replied, in accordance with Mrs. Herbert's expectation, that she must absolutely decline any testimonial of a personal character. Her friends knew well that what she would best like was the establishment in one form or another of "an English Kaiserswerth." This suggestion was accordingly put before her, and she was asked to submit a plan. Her reply was, again, very characteristic. Immersed in the crowded work of the moment, she was in no mood to make future plans; but she took the earliest opportunity of intimating that, whatever the plan might be, she must be the autocrat of it. "Dr. Bence-Jones has written to me," she said (Sept. 27), "for a plan. People seem to think that I have nothing to do but to sit here and form plans. If the public choose to recognize my services and my judgment in this manner, they must leave those services and that judgment unfettered." She was experiencing enough of fetters in the East to last her for a lifetime. An influential Committee was formed, on which Mr. Sidney Herbert and Mr. S. C. Hall served as honorary secretaries, and it was decided to raise a fund for the establishment of some School for Nurses, under a Council, to be nominated by Miss Nightingale. A public meeting was called for November 29, 1855, at Willis's Rooms, "to give expression to a general feeling that the services of Miss Nightingale in the hospitals of the East demand the grateful recognition of the British people." The room proved far too small. It was crowded to suffocation; and never, said the _Times_, in reporting the meeting, had a more brilliant, enthusiastic, and unanimous gathering been held in London.

"Burlington St., this 29th of November," wrote Mrs. Nightingale to Florence, "the most interesting day of thy mother's life. It is very late, my child, but I cannot go to bed without telling you that your meeting has been a glorious one. I believe that you will be more indifferent than any of us to your fame, but be glad that we feel this is a proud day for us; for the like has never happened before, but will, I trust, from your example, gladden the hearts of many future mothers.

One thing will rejoice you. We were all as anxious as you were there that the good Bracebridges' devoted love should be publicly recognized, and Sidney Herbert has taken this occasion to do it most gracefully. The Duke of Cambridge was in the chair and made a simple, manly speech.